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Hampton Court Palace. Thomas Tosier is pounding roasted cacao beans to a paste on a hot granite slab. He is wearing full periwig, breeches and a long waistcoat. The slab has taken an hour and a half to heat up but that’s nothing to the 30-odd hours it will take to grind the beans to…

Both politically and geographically, the English Civil War (1642 – 51) shaped the country we know today. Nine years of fighting followed by a Commonwealth government meant no English monarchy could ever regain the absolute power rulers once enjoyed. The Divine Right of Kings had been severed with the head of Charles I and the…

Perhaps it was the swinging sixties and folk music that did it. Perhaps it was a realisation that in our clamour for modernity we were losing something important to our heritage. Or perhaps it was just a fundamental human need to go back to the land that triggered in the last few decades a resurgence…